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Transylvania County
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This general area was settled in the early 1800’s by Scotch-Irish immigrants who were attracted by the rich soil and abundant game and natural resources. These early pioneers were surely awed by the variety of the land from lush green valleys to densely forested mountains to the headwaters of a chameleon, meandering river, the French Broad, that begins near present-day Rosman (a few miles south of Brevard) and flows from south to north! Many of these original settlers were farmers. Much of what is now forest used to be farmland. (Many of the current residents of the area are the successors of these original settlers. To verify this, you need go no further than the local phone book – take a look at the number of names such as “McCall” and “Galloway.”) By 1860, the population had grown sufficiently that residents sought to establish a town near Rock Springs. Transylvania County came into being in 1861 when Representative Joseph P. Jordan introduced a bill to the North Carolina House of Commons to establish a new county from parts of Henderson and Jackson Counties. Having been born on a farm near Blantyre in Transylvania, it is no surprise that Jordan chose the name “Transylvania” for his new county. (The name, “Transylvania,” comes from the Latin, “trans” for “across” and “sylvan” for “woods,” and could not have been more aptly chosen.) Jordan’s bill also provided for the requested new town in the county. The bill was approved on February 15. 1861. The first official meeting of the Transylvania County court was held May 20, 1861 (by coincidence, the same day North Carolina seceded from the Union.) in a one-room country store called “The Valley Store” at a place called Oak Grove. Alex F. England, Leander S. Gash, and Braxton C. Lankford jointly donated 50 acres for a town site. Brevard was chosen as the name for the new town as a tribute to a notable man, Ephriam Brevard, a colonel in the Revolutionary Army and surgeon. Brevard grew slowly and started with only two or three stores, a new courthouse and county jail, two churches and a dozen residences. The nearby town of Rosman is named after two men, Joseph Rosenthal and Morris Omausky, two business partners of Joseph Silversteen who virtually ran the town with his tanning extract and lumber companies.
Near the turn of the century a rail line was built through the county. It took some of the nation’s wealthiest families to vacation at Lake Toxaway and carried much of the timber logged in the area to sawmills. Due to the amount of logging done in the area, lumber companies sawmills, and tanning companies became profitable businesses. After World War 1. Transylvania County got it’s first modern industry. Harry Strauss brought industrial jobs with the opening of a paper manufacturing plant located on the edge of the Davidson River. This plant called Ecusta has been a major employer in the county for years.
Ephriam Brevard was born in 1744. He studied medicine at Princeton College and was known to be “socially prominent.” At the time of the Revolutionary War, he gained a degree of prominence as a patriot and was esteemed for drafting the Mecklenburg Declaration. This declaration was written before Thomas Jefferson penned the national Declaration of Independence. Brevard joined the Revolutionary War and the fight for independence when the British invaded the South. He was taken prisoner at the surrender of Charleston. Brevard was among prisoners who became severely ill from afflictions such as dysentery. (Reportedly, Andrew Jackson’s mother tended him as a prisoner.) Despite special medicines and treatment, Brevard never recovered from his illness. He died in 1781 about the time the hostile force trod his native soil, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Hopewell. A monument in front of Brevard City Hall that was erected to Ephriam Brevard by his family states that this hero, scholar, and patriot “Fought bravely and died a martyr to that liberty which none loved better and few understood so well.”
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